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Renouncing and Returning to Shareholder Value

As pandemic restrictions began to ease in late 2021, the annual Finnish startup conference Slush made its return as an in-person event. Held for the first time in 2008, Slush grew through the 2010s to become a major international startup event with tens of thousands of attendees—a symbol of the “success story” of Finnish startup culture and a focus of national pride and economic hope. (more…) (read more...)

Space for the Departed: Bone Ash Apartments as an Alternative to Cemeteries in Urban China

Many people in China have started buying residential apartments, not to live in, but to store the ashes of deceased family members. These are called bone ash apartments. Some people think it’s creepy and unlucky to be neighbors with them. Others say, “Honestly, I’d rather have dead neighbors than noisy ones.” So, I started asking, how did bone ash apartments become a real alternative to cemeteries in China? This isn’t just about space—it’s about how land, death, tradition, economy, and policy collide in today’s urban China (UN-Habitat 2020). (more…) (read more...)

Space Selfie: Rethinking Scalarity Between Orbit and Home

We are in Ruzaevka, a small town near Saransk, the regional capital of Mordovia, Russia. Ham radio operator Dmitry Pashkov, photographer Sergei Karpov, and I climb the roof of the local technical college. Sergei and I are on the roof because we are interested in so-called bottom-up space exploration. Dmitry works at this college as an IT specialist. It is a cloudy day in March, and there is a cold wind on the roof, still icy from the winter. Dmitry promises to show us how to get an image of the European part of Russia using an American weather satellite. (more…) (read more...)